Optical drives never require a driver when used in any Windows os from Win95 up. Windows XP and Windows Vista both provide native support that allows an optical drive
to read a data or music disk and to burn a cd-r disk. No support for playing dvd disks, avi or mpeg video files, or for burning cd-rw or dvd disks. For those tasks, compatible 3rd. party recording & dvd decoding software is required.

Reboot the pc or "scan for hardware changes". Your drive(s) should now be visible in My Computer and work properly.
If the drive still fails to work properly after performing any of these fixes, it most likely will need to be replaced.

Also, for optical drive problems in Windows Vista, read this HP web page. Even though it's for HP/Compaq machines, the same principal applies to all modern IDE optical drives regardless of brand.

If your drive stopped working after installing an Adobe product, please read this thread. Note: about 2/3rds. down the page is a video that shows how to peform the "delete upper and lower filters fix".

This is a multi-page thread dealing with issues of the optical drive and problems encountered in Windows XP and Vista. It covers a lot of issues and the most common causes and solutions. Click here to read the thread.

You can get instructions for performing this fix from Microsoft at this page and from this page.